The Virgin of Zesh & the Tower of Zanid (23 page)

XV

For three seconds, Fallon stared at the armed Krishnan. Then the gambler’s instinct that had brought him such signal successes—and shattering failures—in the past prompted him to go up to the guard and say, “Hello there, Girej!”

“Hail, reverend sir,” said Girej with a questioning note in his voice.

Fallon raised his head so that his face was visible under the cowl. “I’ve come to collect on your promise.”

Girej peered at Fallon’s face and rubbed his chin. “I—I should know you, sir. Your face is familiar; I’ll swear by the virility of Yesht that I’ve seen you, but . . .

“Remember the Earthman who saved you from being run through by the Krishnan Scientist?”

“Oh! Ye mean ye be really
not . .
.”

“Exactly. You won’t give us away, will you?”

The guard looked troubled. “But how—what—this is sacrilege, sirs! ’Twould mean my . . .”

“Oh, come on! You don’t mind playing a bit of a joke on those pompous hierarchs, do you?”

“A jest? In the holy temple?”

“Certainly. I’ve made a bet of a thousand karda that I could get into and out of the crypt of the Safq with a whole skin. Naturally I shall need some corroboration that I’ve done so—so there’s one-tenth of that in it for you in return for your testifying that you saw me here.”

“But . . .”

“But what? I’m not asking you to do anything irreligious. I’m not even offering you a bribe. Merely an honest fee for telling the truth when asked. What’s wrong with that?”

“Well, good my sirs . . .” began Girej.

“And have you never wished to prick the pretensions of these conceited hierarchs? Even if Yesht is a great god, those who serve him are merely human like the rest of us, aren’t they?”

“So I ween . . .”

“And didn’t you promise me help when I needed it?”

This went on for some time; but few, Terran or Krishnan, could long resist Fallon’s importunities when he chose to turn on the charm.

At last, when Fallon had raised the ante to a quarter of his winnings, the bewildered Girej gave in, saying, “ ’Tis now near the end of the fourteenth hour, my masters. See that ye return ere the end of the fifteenth, for at that time my watch doth end. If ye do not, ye must needs wait until noon of the morrow, when I come on again.”

“You stand ten-hour watches?” said Fallon, cocking a sympathetic eyebrow. As Krishnans divided their long day into twenty hours beginning at dawn (or, more accurately, halfway from midnight to noon) this would mean a watch of considerably more than twelve Terran hours.

“Nay,” said Girej. “I have the night trick but once in five nights, trading back and forth with my mates. Tomorrow I’m on from the sixth through the tenth.”

“We’ll watch it,” said Fallon.

The Krishnan leaned his halberd against the wall to open the door. This door, like many on Krishna, had a crude locking mechanism consisting of a sliding bolt on both sides, and a large keyhole above each bolt, by means of which this bolt could be worked by a key thrust through from the other side. The bolt on the near side was in the home position, while that on the far side was withdrawn, and a large key stood idle in the keyhole giving access to the latter bolt.

Girej grasped the handle of the near bolt and snapped it back, then pulled on the fixed iron door handle. The door opened with a faint groan. Fallon and Fredro slipped through. The door clanged shut behind them.

Fallon noticed that the mysterious sound now came much more loudly, as from a source just out of sight. He identified these sounds as those of a metal works. He led his companion down the long, dim-lit flight of stairs into the crypt, wondering if he would ever succeed in getting out.

Fredro mumbled, “What if he gives us away to priests?”

“I should like the answer to that one, too,” said Fallon. “Luck’s been with us so far.”

“Maybe I should not have insisted on coming. Is bad place.”

“A fine time to change your so-called mind! Straighten up and walk as if you owned the place, and we may get away with it.” Fallon coughed as he got a lungful of the smoky atmosphere.

At the bottom of the stairs a passage of low-ceilinged, rough-hewn rock ran straight ahead, with openings on both sides into a congeries of chambers whence came the growing clangor. Besides the yellow glow of the oil lamps in their wall brackets, the labyrinth was fitfully lit by scarlet beams from forges and furnaces, the crisscrossing red rays giving an effect like that of a suburb of Hell.

Krishnans—mostly tailed Koloftuma of both sexes—moved through the murk, naked save for leather aprons, trundling carts of materials, carrying tools and buckets of water, and otherwise exerting themselves. Supervisors walked about.

Here and there stood an armed Krishnan in the gear of one of Kir’s royal guard. Civic guards had replaced them only in the less sensitive posts. They shot keen looks at Fallon and Fredro, but did not stop them.

As the Earthmen walked down the corridor, a plan transpired out of the confusion about them. On the right were rooms in which iron ore was smelted down into pigs. These pigs were wheeled across a corridor to other rooms in which they were remelted and cast into smaller bars, which were turned over to smiths. The smith hammered the bars out into flat strips, beat them into rolls around iron mandrels, finally welded them into tubes.

As the Earthmen passed room after room, it became obvious what this establishment was up to. Fallon guessed the truth before they came to the chamber in which the parts were assembled. “Muskets!” he murmured. “Smoothbore muskets!”

He stopped at a rack, wherein a dozen or so of the firearms stood, and picked one out.

“How to shoot?” asked Fredro. “I see no trigger or lock.”

“Here’s a firing pan. I suppose you could touch it off with cigar lighter. I knew this would happen sooner or later! It just missed happening when I tried to smuggle in machine guns. The I.C. will never put this cat back in the bag!”

Fredro said: “Do you think some Earthmen did this, having—ah—having got around hypnotic treatment, or that Krishnans invented them independently?”

Fallon shrugged and replaced the musket. “Heavy damned things. I don’t know, but—I say, I think I can find out!”

They were standing in the assembly room, where a couple of workmen were fitting carved wooden stocks to the barrels. On the other side of the room three Krishnans were conversing about some production problem: two men with the look of overseers, and one small elderly Krishnan with bushy jadepale hair and a long gown of foreign cut.

Fallon strolled over toward these three, timing his approach to arrive just as the two foremen went their ways. He touched the sleeve of the long-haired one. “Well, Master Sainian,” he said. “How did you get involved in this?”

The elderly Krishnan turned toward Fallon. “Aye, reverend sir? You queried me?”

Fallon remembered that Sainian was a little hard of hearing, and it would not do to shout private business at him in public. “To your private chamber, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, aye. Hither, sirs.”

The senior Krishnan led them through the tangle of rooms and passages to a section devoted to sleeping accommodations: dormitories for the workers, crudely furnished with heaps of straw now occupied by snoring and odorous Koloftuma of the off shift—and individual rooms for officials.

Sainian led the Earthmen into one of the latter, furnished austerely but not uncomfortably. While there was no art or grace to this cubicle, a comfortable bed and armchair, a heap of books, and a plentiful supply of cigars and falat-wine were in evidence.

Fallon introduced the two savants in languages that each understood, then said to Fredro, “You won’t be able to follow our conversation much, anyway. So if you don’t mind, stand outside the door until we’re finished, will you? Warn us if anybody starts to come in.”

Fredro groused but went. Fallon closed the door and pushed back his hood, saying, “Know me now, eh?”

“Nay, sir, that I do not . . . but stay! Are you verily a Krishnan or a Terran? You look like one of the latter disguised as the former . . .”

“You’re getting close. Remember Hershid, four years ago?”

“By the superagency of the universe!” cried Sainian. “You’re that Earthman, Antané bad-Faln, sometime Dour of Zamba!”

“I say, not so loud!” said Fallon. Sainian, because of his infirmity, had a tendency to bellow an ordinary conversation.

“Well, what in the name of all the nonexistent devils do you here?” said Sainian in a lower voice. “Have you truly become a priest of Yesht? Never did you strike me as one who’d willingly submit to any cult’s drug-dreams.”

“I shall come to that. First, tell me: are you down in this hole permanently, or can you come and go at will?”

“Ha! Then you cannot be an authentic priest, or you would know without the asking.”

“Oh, I know you’re clever. But answer my question.”

“As to that,” said Sainian, lighting a cigar and pushing the box toward Fallon, “I am as free as an aqebat—in one of the cages in King Kir’s zoo. I come and go as I please—as does a tree in the royal gardens. In short, I roam this small kingdom of the cellar of the Safq without let or hindrance. But so much as a motion toward escape is worth a pike in my chauldron, or a bolt in my back.”

“Do you like that state of affairs?”

“ ’Tis a relative matter, sir. To say I like this gloomy crypt as well as the opulent court of Hershid were tampering with the truth. To say I mislike it as ill as being flayed and broiled like one of those wretches the Yeshtites employ in their major services were less than utter verity.

Relativity, you see. As I have ever maintained, such terms as ‘like’ are meaningless in any absolute sense. One must know what one likes better than . . .”

“Please!” Fallon, who knew his Krishnan, held up a hand. “Then I can count on you not to give me away?”

“Then it
is
some jape or masque, as I suspected! Fear not; your enterprises are nought to me, who tries to look upon the world with serene philosophical detachment. Albeit such traps as this wherein I presently find myself do betimes render difficult that worthy enterprise. Did a chance present itself of dropping demented Kir into some convenient cesspool, I think mundane resentment would overcome the loftiest . . .”

“Yes, yes. But how did you get caught?”

“First, good sir, tell me what do
you
do in this cursed mew? Not mere idle curiosity, I trust?”

“I’m after information. So . . .” Fallon, without going into the reason for wishing this information, briefly told of the methods by which he had penetrated the crypt.

“By Myandé the Execrable! Hereafter I shall believe all tales I hear of the madness of Terrans. You had perhaps one chance in the hundred of getting this far without apprehension.”

“Da’vi has stood by me this time,” said Fallon.

“Whether she stands by you so staunchly on your way out is another matter whose outcome I eagerly await. I would not see your quivering body stretched upon the gruesome altar of Yesht.”

“Why combine worship with torture? Just for fun?”

“Not entirely. There was once an ancient superstition in the land, that by periodically slaying a victim in such wise that the wretch was made copiously to weep, the heavens—by the principles of sympathetic magic—would likewise be induced to weep, thereby causing the crops to grow. And in time this grim usage attached itself to the worship of the Earthgod Yesht. But the truth is, in very fact, that many folk like to see others hurt—a quality wherein, if I read my Terran history aright, we’re not so different from you. Will you have a beaker of wine?”

“Just one—and don’t tempt me with a second. If I have to fight my way out I shall need all my coordination. But let’s have your story, now.”

Sainian drew a deep breath and looked at the glowing end of his cigar. “Word came to me in Hershid that the Dour of Balhib was hiring the world’s leading philosophers, at fabulous stipends, for a combined assault upon the mysteries of the universe. Being—like all men of intellect—somewhat of a fool in worldly affairs, I gave up my professorship in the Imperial Lyceum, journeyed to Zanid, and took service here.

“Now, mad though he be, Kir did have one shrewd idea—unless that cunning son-in-law of his, Chabarian, first put the burr in’s drawers. Myself inclines to the Chabarian hypothesis, for the man once visited your Earth and picked up all sorts of exotic notions there. This particular idea was to collect such credulous lackwits as myself, clap us up in these caves, ply us with liquor and damsels, and then inform us that we should either devise a thing wherewith to vanquish the Qaathians or end up on the smoking altars of Yesht. Faced with this grim alternative, mightily have we striven, and after three years of sweat and swink we have done what no others on this planet have hitherto accomplished.”

“And that was?” said Fallon.

“We have devised a workable gun. Not so handy and quick at vomiting forth its deadly pellets as those of Earth, but yet a beginning. We knew about Terran guns. And though none had ever seen one in fact, we sought information from those who had—such as the Zambava whom you led in your rash raid into Gozashtand back in the reign of King Eqrar. From this we ascertained the basic principles: the hollow metal tube, the ball, the charge of explosive and means for igniting it. The tube with its wooden stock presented no great difficulties, nor did the bullets.

“The crux of the matter was the explosive. We were chapfallen to find that the spore powder of the yasuvar plant, however lively in firecrackers and other pyrotechnics, was useless for our present purpose. After much experiment, the problem was solved by my colleague Nelé-Jurdaré of Katai-Jhogorai with a mixture of certain common substances. Thenceforth ’twas but a matter of cut-and-try.”

“Stimulus-diffusion!”

“What?”

“Never mind,” said Fallon. “Just a Terran term I got from Fredro. Who was in on this project besides you?”

Sainian relit his cigar. “There were but two others worthy of the name of philosopher: Nelé-Jurdaré—who, alas, perished in an accidental explosion of his mixture a while ago . . . What date is it by the way? With nought to tell the time by but the changing of the guard, one loses track.”